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Friday, December 18, 2009

The N-Effect

This is a really neat study. The basic point is summed up as: "the motivation to succeed decreases as the number of [people, or, N] rises.

I can say from personal experience that strikes me as being accurate. When I used to work out at LA Fitness if it were the middle of the week and only a hand-full of people who were working out hard, I would tend to focus on them and work hard. But if I went on a busy weekend I would just do what I thought was my 'typical' workout.

This is true for classes I've been in too. In a small class of 20 or 30 people, I remember focusing on really doing my best to 'compete' with others in terms of class participation (yes, I was one of those annoying students) - because I loved the feel of 'debate' and the personal competition. Groups of us would even compare grades and we would feed off each other. But with a large lecture of 100+ students, there is little motivation to even attempt to compete/compare with so many people.

7 comments:

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Garth Brazelton

About Me

I work for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation as the Director of Operations and Business Systems, and I teach macroeconomics at Indiana University (Indianapolis). Previously, I was an Economist at the US DOT in Cambridge, MA. This blog does not represent the opinions of any of these organizations.